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Playbook · Strategy and influence · 8 steps
Making a hard decision
Decide well under uncertainty, at the right speed, with the right people.
“…most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had.”
- 1Decision Rights (Who Has the D?)Who decides, who must agree, and whose input do we need?For each important decision, make clear who recommends, who must agree, who gives input, who carries it out, and the one person who decides.Open
- 2CynefinIs this a problem to analyse, or one to probe with small experiments?First work out what kind of situation you are in, because clear, complicated, complex and chaotic problems each need a different way of deciding.Open
- 3One-Way vs Two-Way DoorsHow reversible is it? Two-way doors deserve speed, one-way doors deserve care.Match decision rigour to reversibility: decide reversible choices fast and irreversible ones carefully.Open
- 4Inversion and the Pre-mortemWhat would make this decision fail, and how do we avoid that?Instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure — then avoid it.Open
- 5Probabilistic ThinkingHow likely is each outcome, and what would change our estimate?Reason in likelihoods and distributions, not certainties and averages.Open
- 6SatisficingWhat does good enough look like, so we can stop searching when we find it?With limited time, information and attention, set a clear bar for good enough and take the first option that meets it, instead of searching for the best.Open
- 7First Principles ThinkingWhich constraints are real, and which are only habit?Break a problem down to what must be true, then rebuild the solution from there instead of copying others.Open
- 8Decisions vs Outcomes (Resulting)How will we judge this decision later: by its process, not only its outcome?Judge a decision by the process and the information available at the time, not by how it turned out, because outcomes mix skill with luck.Open